Neo-Nazi Musician Sent Back to German Prison

Hendrik Möbus, a 25-year-old neo-Nazi and convicted murderer, was extradited in July from the United States and returned to prison in Germany.

He has been sentenced to three years there for mocking and demeaning his murder victim, performing a stiff-armed Nazi salute, and fleeing parole, all crimes under German law.

The extradition ended efforts by the neo-Nazi National Alliance to win U.S. political asylum for Möbus on the grounds that he faced political persecution at home. Möbus was ruled ineligible because of his prior murder conviction.

Möbus was convicted of helping to stab and strangle a high school classmate to death in 1993. After embracing a style of music called National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) and even recording while still in prison, Möbus was released on parole in 1998.

Within a year, after giving a "Sieg Heil" salute at a concert, Möbus was convicted and sentenced on the new charges.

Möbus fled to the United States in December 1999. Once here, he apparently discussed ways of bringing European NSBM and other "white power" music to the United States with various American neo-Nazis, most notably Resistance Records owner and National Alliance leader William Pierce.

After overstaying his 90-day visa waiver by six months, Möbus was captured by authorities in August 2000 near Pierce's compound in West Virginia.

Pierce made numerous appeals on behalf of Möbus, an unprecedented step for a leader who has often stood by as his Alliance members faced legal trouble. Alliance members twice protested Möbus' extradition at the German embassy.

At the second protest in July, Alliance Deputy Membership Coordinator Billy Roper was bloodied in a scuffle with counter-demonstrators.

Möbus is imprisoned in the eastern state of Thuringia. The National Alliance reports that the murderer, who once boasted of his "Luciferian will-to-power," has been assigned to "scrub prison floors and other similar tasks."